The Summer Show

The story

A British comedy sketch show from 1975 featuring winners of the ATV talent show New Faces; made by ATV for the ITV network

Designed to emulate the fast moving style of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, it featured Marti Caine, Lenny Henry, Victoria Wood, impressionist Aiden J Harvey and singer Trevor Chance. To help out with the first show was the more experienced TV personality Leslie Crowther.

The Summer Show consisted of five, forty five minute specials on the subjects of "holidays", "health and strength","mystery and crime","kids", and "entertainment".

The performers, who were paid £175 a week for their efforts, were encouraged to diversify. Thus it featured the unlikely sight of Wood and Crowther duetting and other thrown together combinations for songs, sketches and dances.

Wood said of the experience "it was one of those really bad variety shows where they got the scripts out of other people's dustbins. It was just dreadful." She was told by costumers, who said she was too big for the costumes, "if only you'd lose two stone you could wear this of Anna Massey's"

Wood immediately went back to the unemployment queue when it ended. Whereas the series was a springboard for other cast members. Caine got her own TV series and Henry joined The Black and White Minstrel Show. [1]